ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emergence of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) as a cornerstone of global women's rights activism and as a central factor in policy conversations addressing poverty eradication, sustainable development, and the realization of human rights. It focuses on mobilizing for global policies that primarily affect women in the South. Feminist pursuit of South-focused SRHR began as a response to shortcomings in the conceptualization, as well as the implementation, of "population control and family planning" policies and programs by the UN system, international donors, and nation states. At the global level and especially in the large countries of South and east Asia with authoritarian governments, population policies and programs reflected a conviction that rapid growth jeopardizes development and environmental sustainability, and that "family planning", achieved through greatly increased use of modern contraception, is the solution, the so-called magic bullet.
